Fugitive extremist on run for 21 years held

: Evading arrest for the past 21 years, a 45-year-old extremist, wanted in several cases, including attempt to murder leaders of Hindu outfits, has been arrested in Kerala by CB-CID police and remanded to judicial custody, police said.
Hyder Ali alias "Engineer Ali," and his associates had allegedly conspired to assassinate leaders of various Hindu organisations after the banned fundamentalist outfit Al-Umma leader SA Basha was arrested in 1993 in the Chennai RSS office bombing case, which killed 11 persons and injured seven.
He was remanded to judicial custody here yesterday.
Police had registered cases in 1993 against Hyder Ali on several counts, including criminal conspiracy to commit murders and possession of explosives.

Hyder Ali and 21 others had attacked eight leaders of Hindu organisations here in 1989 when they were returning from the funeral of Veera Ganesh, a Hindu Munnani functionary, who was killed by Islamist fundamentalists. An attempt to murder case was filed and CB-CID later took over the investigation.
Hyder Ali worked for eight years in Riyadh in Saudi Arabia and later spent several years in Karnataka and Kerala before his hideout in Palakkad District in Kerala was busted by intelligence officials.

Police are probing if Ali had links with conduits of terror sleeper cells during his "self-imposed exile" of eight years in Saudi Arabia.

It is also being investigated if he had contacts with another absconding terrorist Abu Backer Siddique, who carries a reward of Rs five lakh on his head.
Sources said a petition seeking police custody of Hyder Ali would be filed soon.